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Hanging Tough

As Madonna pushed her relationship with the city close to the breaking point last week, claiming that New York “is not the exciting place it used to be,” others looked back to the glory days of the eighties, too. Hillary Clinton fashioned herself the protagonist of Rocky III, ready for a comeback against Barack Obama’s merciless Clubber Lang. Mario Cuomo issued a quaint, Mondale-esque proclamation that the Democratic front-runners should join forces on a unified ticket. California congressman Darrell Issa insisted that 9/11 was the city’s problem to deal with. Jamie Dimon backed up Ben Bernanke’s defense of the Bear Stearns bailout in front of Congress. The City Council finally passed Mayor Bloomberg’s congestion-pricing bill, though it appeared D.O.A. in Albany; Speaker Christine Quinn was embarrassed by revelations that her office had stashed funds in nonexistent charities for later allocation as pork. Catholic-school teachers working without contracts hinted that a strike might coincide with the arrival of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, on April 18. Sean Bell’s buddy Joseph Guzman testified that a cop looked Guzman in the eye while shooting him sixteen times. Woody Allen sued Dov Charney’s American Apparel for $10 million; the hipster clothier had used a still of him dressed as what Grammy Hall would call a “real Jew” on billboards without permission. A plan to remake Bellevue Hospital as a luxury hotel sounded just crazy enough to work. A sack of human bones was found buried in the basement of Tribeca’s Tokyo Bar. (None belonged to late broadcaster Alistair Cooke, whose daughter testified in his mortician’s skeleton-poaching trial.) As Yogi looked on, Reggie tossed the final first pitch in the House That Ruth Built. Jay-Z was reported to be on the verge of signing a $150 million album-tour-development hybrid deal with concert promoter Live Nation. And, most important, the New Kids on the Block reunited on the Today show.